people have talked about the relative non-presence of children in black sails but the ways in which they are present are also quite interesting... they represent the future for sure that's what children always represent but also from the "nothing left but the monsters in the stories they tell their children" thing to the little kids that gawk at flint when he's about to be executed to abigail to the kids reading the general history of the pyrates at the end they are very frequently in the position of passing down judgment. which is ever so slightly different from just like, the future will judge us, because it's not about what the children will do when they grow up to be adults. children are judges *in their capacity as children.* it's a war over the imagination of children. which of course makes perfect sense it's the prequel to a children's book.
lestat having a musical written about his life by elton john which got negative critiques all across the board and only had a 2 month run on broadway before closing is the most lestat thing that could happen to him
something very comforting about learning the black sails showrunners responded to the theory that the show was named after the theseus myth like Wow that would have been incredibly clever of us if it had been on purpose
real DMIAD talk. the fetch and hendricks scene with the dragon fucked me up. from the moment that scene happened I knew how the book was gonna end.
so you're telling me there's this beautiful, ancient creature of power and wisdom that has been so harmed and disfigured by human hands (and actions) that it has become near unrecognisable? that its vitality and hope have been so systematically stripped from it that — even if it were physically liberated — there is nothing left for it in the world? certainly nothing that could be called 'living'. and even if it was freed, could you let it go? knowing that it can no longer exist as it was, and would only hurt itself and others in the attempt to do so? right. riiiiiiiiiiightttt. allegory is stupid I hate it here gimme that pistol gayboy
Claudia (Interview with the Vampire) vs. Guinevere Pendragon (BBC Merlin)
Claudia
Guinevere Pendragon
Voting ended onAug 5
Propaganda below the cut:
Claudia:
She's a young black woman who is constantly ignored over the men in the show and reduced to nothing more than tragic pieces of the mens' life story by many of the fans and sometimes even the showrunners.
Not only is she just the best girl around but she's so incredibly complex---we as the audience still don't know the real and true her. I would die to get to know her but it's shocking a large part of the IWTV fandom isn't the same!
I can't speak to her treatment from book/movie fans but TV fans literally only talk about her in relation to being Louis and lestats "daughter". By the end of her life she's in her 40s and yet the fandom only treats her as their young daughter and she is defined by that instead of her actual character
due to claudia being a black woman who is directly opposed to everyone’s white male pookie (lestat) there has been a lot of misogyny thrown at her in the form of calling her a liar because the events of her personal diary (that was never supposed to be read by anyone) don’t align with lestat’s own account of events. she is seen as manipulative and selfish and someone who was trying to drive a wedge between louis and lestat, and her own classification as a victim of abuse in this family dynamic is undermined by her efforts to remove herself and find her own community. the abuse she faces by other male leads like louis and armand is minimized even if fans are able to see lestat’s abuse for what it is, even though armand staged a lynching for her, louis, and her companion madeleine and lied about it, alongside louis minimizing lestat and armand’s actions against her. the fandom is happy to take all the male characters at face value but as far as claudia is concerned everything she did was duplicitous and self-serving.
claudia deserved better from her “family” and it breaks my heart that her life in the grand scheme of things was cut so short just as she was finding her happiness. she is incredibly funny and the love she finds with madeleine is so beautiful. the struggle of being a woman in a body that is at odds with you and who you really are and what you want to be able to do in the world is very compelling and easy to empathize with from so many different avenues whether it’s by race, disability, and/or gender/sexuality. she is such an incredible character that should be seen as more than just an obstacle and loustat’s dead daughter. her and madeleine are the best lesbian vampires and everyone should be tuning into the yuri.
She's either a horrible and manipulative girl who lies in her own personal diaries for some reason about the abuse she faced from her white father or she's an idiot who got what was coming to her when she was lynched or just a tool to be used to further the relationship between two men. Her story is quite literally never her own, her diaries shared again and again without her consent and picked apart by both the characters in universe and fans.
She's literally so interesting and so well acted by both of the actresses who play her. She has such depth and her life was cut short due to racism, misogyny, and ableism. She deserves more than to be reduced to nothing but a liar or a tragic figure to be used to further the relationship between two men.
even people claim to like her will call her stupid for her actions in season two, even though she quite literally spells out her reasons for being so desperate to join the coven. In season one she's shown trying again and again to turn a person and make herself a companion. In season two she tells Louis (her father/brother who she loves but at this point he had gotten physically violent with her when she tried to convince him to kill their maker Lestat once and for all) that the only vampires she's known are him, their white maker (who beat Louis half to death, threatened Claudia by mentioning her rapist, got violent with her, and tried to kill her), the aforementioned rapist, and her white father's white side piece who he was planning to replace her with. She wants to belong somewhere with people like her, yeah she endures humiliation at first but considering what she'd been through at this point, it makes sense that she can justify it for a while to be a necessary evil. It's also important to note that she doesn't have all the information! Louis does not tell her that Armand threatened to kill him the night she was inducted into the coven. There was no way she could have predicted Lestat coming back or Armand and the coven's plan to lynch them. Why does a woman, and especially a Black woman, have to be completely objective and rational and borderline clairvoyant all the time to be deserving of sympathy?
A major theme of s1/2 (I'm not watching s3 lol) is that nothing is really ever about Claudia. Even when Louis says he's doing something for her, it's not really about her. Even her death wasn't about her, it was about Louis and Armand and the coven's relations with each other. And yet the fandom picks up on this, but does not critically examine it. So in fandom…..nothing is about her. It's about Lestat, or Louis, or occasionally Armand, or Loustat's relationship. Nobody ever puts her first despite her being one of the most interesting characters. It hurts my heart!!!
Another big part of the show is how infantilized she is and how much she hated that. She HATED being seen as a little girl. When she dies, she is in her 40s or 50s. And yet…you guessed it… fandom sees this and is like "aw, Loustat's little daughter" or "Louis's little sister" when she actively fought against being treated like a little girl and has an (amazingly well acted, kudos to Bailey Bass) breakdown in s1 over the fact that her mind will age but her body will not.
Justice for my fully grown mature adult woman!
Guinevere Pendragon:
The vitriol towards her seems to have calmed down within recent years (at least what I have seen) but especially when the show was airing people treated her horribly. Her being a black woman very much played a part in it, as well as the classic fandom dogpiling on any woman who supposedly 'gets in the way' of a m/m ship. They hate to see a woman in power.
She is consistently kind and loving throughout the story, demonstrating bravery and an unwavering willingness to defend and make sacrifices for the people she loves. She is a positive influence in the life of literally everyone she interacts with, even those who eventually betray her. She is emotionally rich and complicated due to her background as a commoner with a close yet strained relationship to the monarchy. She's lovely and she's interesting, and for a show with a fandom that often cares to dissect the relevant queercoding within the text, not nearly enough attention is given to her interactions with other women (imo). She is more than just a love interest, I swear!!!
Made to be an obstacle to the popular m/m ship
Constant sidelining her in favour of that whiteboy ship and reducing her role in the show, either villainising her and calling her misogynistic slurs (how funny that the other characters have also shown attraction to different people but only she is called a slut for having like two crushes and one serious relationship, I wonder why) or refusing to engage with her character on the basis of ‘she’s too underwritten and boring’, also a complete refusal to ever give any weight to the horrendous treatment she got over the course of the show (nearly being executed multiple times, the love spell, the torture and brainwashing, the strange racist plotline where a Middle Eastern-coded character captures and almost forces her to have sex with him??) like it’s so hard to see how over the years she’s consistently been hated and gets the least amount of grace and sympathy than any of the other (white) characters do
Despite the show’s writing failing her often, she’s the sweetest specialest girl of all time and everyone in that show loves her so bad likeee that is QUEEN GUINEVERE OF CAMELOT, and with a much more coherent character arc than fans give credit for, her progression from supporting other characters to do what’s good and right and bring change to the kingdom to gaining the confidence and power to take on an active tole herself, also Angel Coulby is soooo beautiful<33 Honestly my Once and Future Queen<333
In a lot of fanfics she's only there to act as a cheerleader for the popular m/m ship, one half of whom is her husband. and that's if she's even included at all
She is the best character in the show and i adore her. She's funny and brave and kind and does not take any shit from her love interest, but because she's played by a black woman she got shit from day one. Angel coulby has been harrassed, bullied, and treated like absolute shit for the crime of (checks notes) playing a fictional character. It's made even worse bc she "gets in the way" of merthur even though the show is literally based in mythology and we all know that's arthur's future wife. Free my girl /immediately/
gwen propaganda incoming because i genuinely think The Hunter's Heart accidentally proves why Gwen is one of the strongest characters in the entire show.
Because every discussion about this episode ends up being about Arthur, or Morgana, or the love triangle drama, and meanwhile Gwen is over here carrying the entire plot on her back.
She's been falsely accused. Exiled. Separated from everyone she loves. Forced into poverty. Living completely alone. Still heartbroken. Still believing Arthur hates her. Still believing she deserves her punishment. And then she gets captured by raiders.
Most characters would be having a complete breakdown at this point. Gwen doesn't. Instead she immediately starts adapting.
No matter what happens to her, she survives.
Helios objectifies her? She plays along just enough to stay safe. He invites her to dinner? She keeps her composure. She's trapped in an enemy camp? She keeps her eyes and ears open.
And because she's paying attention, she's the one who discovers the conspiracy against Camelot.
Not Merlin.
Not Arthur.
Not the knights.
GWEN.
The exiled servant everyone threw away. The woman everyone assumed was powerless. The woman who technically owes Camelot absolutely nothing at this point.
And what does she do with that information? She risks her life trying to warn them anyway.
Gwen has every reason to be bitter.
Camelot failed her. Arthur failed her. The court failed her.
And yet the moment she learns the kingdom is in danger, her first instinct is still:
"I need to stop this."
Not because anyone will thank her. Not because she'll be rewarded. Not because it'll clear her name. Because it's the right thing to do.
THAT is Gwen.
People talk all the time about Arthur's nobility. People talk all the time about Merlin's loyalty.
But Gwen is just as noble as Arthur and just as loyal as Merlin (IF NOT MORE)
The difference is that nobody ever gives her credit for it.
And honestly one of the most heartbreaking parts of the episode is that Gwen still believes she deserves exile.
Even after everything. Even after being manipulated. Even after losing everything. Even after surviving completely alone. She still tells Merlin that she can never see Arthur again because she got what she deserved.
Meanwhile I'M sitting on my couch screaming: GWEN YOU ARE LITERALLY THE BESTEST PERSON HERE.
She keeps choosing kindness when she has every excuse reason not to. She keeps choosing loyalty when loyalty has cost her everything. She keeps choosing courage when she's terrified.
And The Hunter's Heart is honestly one of the best examples of that.
Because underneath all the weird Helios stuff, the episode is really about Gwen proving exactly who she is when nobody is there to help her.
And the answer is: A hero.
(oh and if you were wondering, no the helios stuff is never brought up again, much like everything concerning gwen)
miranda is a very forgiving and generous person and not generally jealous at all but i think she should get to have some negative feelings about her life getting all fucked up. she genuinely loves flint and knows that he loves her but i think on occasion she should look at him and think damn if it weren't for this guy i might still be in london and my husband might still be alive and i might still be the person he loves most in the entire world and i might not be stuck on this island alone larping as a puritan. and then feel bad about thinking it because it's literally not his fault But. but
too many people seem to think certain ships would officially start going out and put a label on their relationship and sometimes even go so far as to get married. but most of the time said ships would really just be freaks and fuck weirdstyle without addressing the elephant in the room that is the mutual romantic attraction
@bumblebearr about my "I don't think s5 gwen is badly written" tag (don't want to be annoying by adding to this post)
look it's been ages since I watched S5 so this is based on my vague recollections of it but I never really got the complaints about how they "ruined" gwen's character in S5?
she's is certainly underutilised, and she spends about 1/3 of the season in thrall to morgana, but when she's there and she's herself, I don't think she acts that OOC?
the two complaints I've seen most often are: a) she seems more distant towards merlin after she becomes queen, and b) she doesn't do much to change things regarding the magic ban (I think? or maybe that she doesn't do much as queen in general)
to which I say, a) yes, it sucks that we don't get many gwen/merlin interactions, but to me it makes sense that gwen becoming queen would change things for them. like, she's busy. also, S5 merlin has isolated himself and is fighting his one-sided psychological warfare with mordred which takes up most of his free time, probably. honestly I don't think he's that close to arthur, either.
and b) I think she acts as can be expected by someone who grew up in a place where magic is maligned and feared. ultimately she was raised in a similar environment to arthur. the only person she ever got close to who turned out to have magic – to her knowledge, at this point – is morgana, and well you know how that turned out. (I also think much of the criticism arthur receives for his conduct as king isn't entirely fair but that's another post)
overall, I liked s5 and I liked s5 gwen. the dark tower episode is the gayest episode in the entire series (argue with the wall) and morgana’s manipulation is fascinating because I do think she exploited genuine feelings of guilt and regret that gwen had about morgana and used them to bind gwen to her. I mean, clearly she was brainwashed, but I think gwen's horror and sorrow at learning about morgana's imprisonment and torture at the hands of sarrum were real. she was her friend!!
also, it's interesting (and kind of funny) to see how blindly arthur trusts gwen and how easily she could've manipulated him if she wanted. and married gwen & arthur's interactions are cute <3
there's also that beautiful moment in the final episode when gwen puts two and two together and tells gaius she's pleased that "dragoon" is with arthur. which tells you she likely already had suspicions (gwen 🤝 gwaine <- I'm a "gwaine knew" truther)
I don't know, I understand wanting more of gwen in S5 but I never got the "badly written" complaints. I'm a s5 defender. let women be evil, let women kill. have some fun
